


Progress

by Werepirechick



Series: a little broken, but still good. [1]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Rehabilitation, Unethical Experimentation, and also cody's, but they're learning!, fanzine prompt, in which i give the dark turtles actual closure to their story, they're working on being better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 23:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14436339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werepirechick/pseuds/Werepirechick
Summary: Months ago, after the arrest and trial of his uncle, Cody made the choice to open his home to the clones of his time-travelling friends. There's ups and downs, good days and bad days, but he's yet to regret that choice.It's not perfect, but they're making progress.





	Progress

**Author's Note:**

> *re-uploaded since i posted too early by mistake haha
> 
> written for sassatello's 2003 TMNT fanzine on tumblr, thank you sass for getting me off my butt and on the job of actually writing this AU. i love my big terrible boys and their tiny redhead.
> 
> more to come from this AU, since its A) everything i love in life; found families, self-esteem issues, dysfunctional relationships, ptsd recovery, etc. and B) i have a friend who ALSO loves all those things and is ALSO writing stuff for this AU, and we're just having too much fun to stop. also, i assigned all the dark turtles actual names besides calling them "dark" whatever, since i couldn't recall us ever hearing them be called anything other than a lot of insults in canon? anyway, they've all got individual nicknames now like they deserve.
> 
> please enjoy.

Cody is used to having people move in and out of his workspace, nowadays- after having the turtle brothers live with him for a couple months, their total lack of social boundaries a crash course on interacting with someone besides Serling.

He’s got different turtle brothers living with him now, and though they’re all complete individuals and completely different from their gene sources- Cody is as used to them as they’re used to him. Mostly. They have rough moments now and again; someone’s trigger rubbing someone else’s the wrong way, or something along those lines. But they’re working on it, figuring out how to exist in a life without Darius Dun to poison it.

And so, because unless someone announces themselves, Cody tends to let whoever’s come to watch him enter and possibly leave without interrupting them, like they’re not interrupting him. He’s up to his arms in wires and gears in a new invention at the moment- a better version of the engines on the market at the moment, cleaner fuel conversion, more output for the input it gets- his heads all filled up with the blueprints and schematics he spent the morning drawing, and now all he wants is to get this baby done and sent to his assistants’ test labs.

But, something brushing his side ever so lightly, still draws him out of his brainstorm of thoughts and plans. It’s lower than Tello’s touch would be, and Len’s- gentler than Angelo’s, so…

Ah, Ray.

“Hi,” Cody says distractedly, plucking a wire that’s not cooperating from the machine and debating quick-fire how he’s going to fix that. “Need something?”

“…mrgh.”

“I think we’re all out of that,” Cody quips, but at the silence following, finally looks away from his project. Ray is kneeling behind his stool, putting himself at level with Cody where he sits, and isn’t looking at Cody directly.

“Ray?” he asks, taking his hands out of the engine prototype.

Instead of answering, Ray ducks his head; looking completely the opposite of Cody’s direction, hunched on himself and baring the stretch of scales between the base of his skull and its ridges and the edge of his jagged shell. Silent, asking.

“Oh,” Cody says, and smiles. He pulls off his gloves and tosses them to the floor somewhere, not really caring where they end up. Then he pushes his hair out of his face- he might need a haircut, actually- and reaches over to grab the edge of Ray’s shell, pulling his rolling stool closer to the turtle.

Very carefully, so he doesn’t spook Ray, who is still adjusting to people and touching that doesn’t involve pain right after- Cody wraps his arms around his friend’s neck best he’s able. Ray’s huge arms come up a beat after, closing around Cody’s body with so much care you’d think he was afraid he’d break Cody.

And knowing the way Ray still flinches, whenever he misjudges his strength and the fragility of something, that’s probably an apt assessment.

“Hi,” Cody says, patting the rough scales of Ray’s shoulder on the other side. “You feeling alright today? Bad dreams? Break a glass? Or- did Angelo scare you again? He got me this morning, when I was trying to get another cup of coffee- totally surprised me from around the corner like that, and I nearly kicked him in the shin for it-”

Ray doesn’t answer, just lifting Cody off his stool and cradling him as he sits down on the lab floor. Cody wants to keep working, he’s on a roll after all- but Ray is having one of the moments where he  _really_  wants to have someone near, and doesn’t feel comfortable asking his brothers, or asking Cody directly.

Oh well. The engine isn’t going anywhere.

Cody is as used to being carted around by people bigger than him as he is used to those said people. Ray setting Cody on his crossed legs and just sitting there, half looking at him out of the corner of his pure yellow eyes and clearly listening, if not talking.

“I started a new project again,” Cody says, taking up the task of filling the silence. “I was looking at reports about how battery disposal from vehicles and ships is still a problem, since not all of the components can be broken down safely- so I thought  _hey,_  I bet I could make a temporary solution to this, extend their lives and warranty longer and then start figuring out an engine that would remove the problem all together. I can’t do the second engine first, since people are like,  _really_  attached to how the industry is, even though we all learned how that went with oil in the twenty-first era, but it’ll be like… this big band-aid on things until I can strong-arm a few companies into manufacturing the new, clean engines I’ll be making… shouldn’t be too hard, right? O’Neil Tech already owns shares in them all, anyway…”

Ray listens, observant and attentive, while Cody rambles in circles about plans he’s got for the future, and how long he thinks it’ll take to make it all happen, and the ideas he’s got for other ongoing projects, too…

Cody is happy to have a listening ear, and doesn’t mind being a living teddy bear for the length of the one-sided conversation. Ray is cool in temperature, and that’s welcome after working up a sweat with his projects. Cody doesn’t even falter his conversation when Ray starts touching his hair- letting his big friend comb his claws through the red strands with the kind of quiet curiosity he tends to have, regarding people who are warmblooded rather than coldblooded.

Before he’s really noticed, Cody has talked himself hoarse for nearly an hour, and he’s comfortably sprawled over Ray’s legs while his friend looms over him. But it’s a nice kind of loom, like an overhang of shade, or a shield, protecting Cody from the lights of his lab and the world at large.

Cody, despite what the peacekeepers seemed to think whenever they check in on his friend’s and their progress to rehabilitation, really does feel perfectly safe with the giant turtles. They mess up a lot, yeah, but so does everyone, and they’ve worked  _so hard_  to learn stuff no one ever taught them before. Including how to be gentle.

Asking for physical affection is a bit of a work in progress, but it’s progressing, and they’ve all come up with their own ways to ask for it indirectly. Cody is happy to oblige them when asked to, since, honestly, he’s a bit stunted in social graces and interactions, too. Before the brothers, the first four- he never had any friends, period. Just him and Serling, alone in the penthouse. So there were never any affectionate noogies, or friendly shoving contests, or sharing of space of any kind.

It’s nice that these four brothers are as new to that as Cody is, even if that newness is rooted in the kind of life experiences that were far worse than just lonely.

“So,” Cody starts again, after winding his way through the list of necessary, if frustrating, higher ups of his company he’d have to wrangle into order over the engines, “do you feel like talking about what’s bothering you, or…?”

Ray narrows his eyes, breathing in deep and slow as he thinks. Letting the air back out in a sigh, he scoops Cody back up and stands carefully. He shifts Cody as they walk towards the doors of the lab, so Cody is mostly on his shoulder.

Cody obliges his friend and climbs up onto Ray’s back, holding onto the smoother edges of the shell there and letting his legs hang down. It looks like Ray feels that  _showing_  Cody whatever’s happened will be faster than him describing. Cody figures he’s been on break this long; a little while longer won’t hurt.

They pass through the doors and hallways, headed upwards through each wide passage. Thankfully, when Cody had decided the four brothers ought to move in with him, it’d only taken a few renovations here and there to widen some doorways and corridors. So they could all fit comfortably, especially Ray.

It’s been almost a full year since Darius got caught, finally, and dragged into custody. And when he was brought down, so were the four highly illegal experiments in his possession.

On top of every single criminal offense he’d committed, the discovery of four  _sentient beings_  being kept in his possession, used like weapons instead of the bare  _months old_  people they were- it’d really sealed the deal against Darius in court. Cody had made sure they hired the best people for the prosecution team, made  _damn sure_  his uncle couldn’t weasel out from the charges against him.

The experimentation and creation of sentient beings is, for the most part, illegal as all hell. The only way to create life artificially is if you’ve received absolute clearance from the government- paperwork miles long,  _decades’_  worth of degrees and qualifications required, and an endless list of references needed to make utterly certain that you weren’t going to just make a  _person_  for the hell of it. Some species can’t reproduce naturally, or individuals with health complications preventing them- they’re the ones who apply and receive the grants for this kind of thing.

The four clones of the original turtle brothers were  _anything_  but legal, and on top of all the intergalactic violations of just their creation alone- their upraising, their care, their quality of  _life-_  that had been nothing short of slavery, pure and simple. And slavery in any shape or form has been illegal for centuries.

It’d still been a rough process, freeing the brothers of the captivity they’d been placed in. To assess the state of their mental and physical wellbeing, to protect the evidence of Darius Dun’s trial- that had been what the people in charge called keeping them locked up in cells, but it’d just been more fear and dehumanizing behavior aimed at the brothers. Who were, at the time,  _maybe_  a year old.

 _“They’re not monsters,”_  Cody remembers saying, during the appeal for their custody to be transferred to O’Neil Tech. After he’d looked at their files, and reviewed his own experiences, and with the clear hindsight of what his uncle really was- seen them for what they really were, under the defensive anger and displays of fear aggression.

“ _They’re just kids. Big, scared kids. And treating them like you are is grounds for an abuse lawsuit.”_

Everyone got a lot more cooperative, once Cody rolled out that threat and his legal team.

Through everything Cody’s had to cope with in the wake of Darius’s true colors being revealed, the guilt of what the cloned brothers had to go through, how they were treated and what they were told they were  _meant_  for- it left Cody choked, a number of times. Thick and terrible and drowning. All those horrible deeds, and Cody had loved the man like family. He’d never seen until it was nearly too late.

Cody’s come to understand what real family is meant to be like, how real family is supposed to feel like and treat you. It’s been a learning process, like it has been for Ray and his siblings.

And speaking of, the mystery of Ray’s distress comes to light.

The rooftop’s garden has grown bit by bit, since the clone brothers moved in. Len, as it turns out, never did forget about the first little bonsai he was given. It’s kind of his thing these days, spending hours with finicky plants that need all his attention and care. Like it’s Tello’s thing to pick a new science to study each week, unbound by need to constantly be ready for new threats and fights, and it’s Angelo’s thing to wander in and out of everyone’s spaces, picking up things by osmosis and questioning  _everything._  Ray, meanwhile, likes crafts, oddly enough. Wood, mostly, for carving with his talons.

They’ve all gotten good at their preferred hobbies, honestly, and found easier temperament for it. Less quick to bite any metaphorical or literal stray fingers near them, less driven into harsh spells of anxiety over any little thing. Creating or caring for things counters what they were taught, living under Darius.

But, traits of defensiveness and intense fear of  _losing_  anything they get for themselves- that all still remains, and surfaces whenever someone gets startled.

On the rooftop, Ray shows Cody two things. Splayed across the ground in its own soil, a broken potted plant. Nearby it, glasses with shattered lens and warped frames.

One of Len’s favorite plants, and Tello’s specially commissioned glasses.

“Did they have a fight?” Cody asks, sighing.

“…Tello got distracted, telling Angelo off about some comment the idiot made, an’ his tail knocked over the pot,” Ray supplies, talking carefully. His instinct, if there’s a fight nearby, is to either lash out before someone can at him, or hunker down and wait until the worst is over. And since Ray, like all of them, is working so hard to  _not_  lash out at anyone anymore, least of all their family…

Well, Ray goes quiet. Curled up in himself and depending on his size and shell to protect him. Cody pats his friend’s shell absently, guessing that’s what Ray did as his brothers fought.

“And then what happened?” Cody questions, since the glasses are unexplained, still. Tello needs corrective lenses, it turned out, a short while after they’d all come to stay with Cody. Specialty design just for the turtle, to clear away the blur things far away had. Tello spent a lot less time squinting ‘suspiciously’ at everyone, once he had them.

“Tello told Len he could just repot the stupid thing, and… Len broke his glasses, sayin’ Tello could just  _replace_  them. Then they started punching each other, an’ I, uh.”

Cody pats Ray’s shell a little more, and doesn’t force his friend to actually admit he ran away. Vulnerability in any form is  _so hard_  for them all, even when it’s something understandable.

Cody sighs, and knows they’ll probably have to do a lot of damage control. And not just with Tello, Len, and Ray- who even  _knows_  where Angelo’s gone and stashed himself, hiding in the way only he can, given his smaller size than his brothers. Knowing Tello, their tailed sibling blames especially Angelo for the whole thing, and Len probably isn’t going to disagree with that. Wherever Angelo is, it’ll take some doing to haul him out of the shadows and calm down.

Really, underneath all the posturing, anger, and blaming- they’re probably all mostly scared they’ll get punished somehow, for causing a squabble that destroyed property. Even though Cody hasn’t, and won’t  _ever_  punish them for something like that.

Old habits die hard, especially when related to trauma.

“Sorry,” Ray mutters under his breath, for what Cody isn’t entirely certain. There’s a lot of things here Ray could be apologizing for, even if it’s not necessary.

“It’s okay,” Cody says, because it is, it always will be, and he’ll keep saying that as many times as he needs to. “We’ll get a new pot, and we’ll order another pair of glasses. No harm done.”

“…you sure?”

“Positive.”

Ray bobs his head, some of the tension in his easing. Cody reaches out, just a little, leaning to touch the red scales of Ray’s neck and give them a gentle stroke- trailing his fingers to the stiff membrane of the twin crests on either side there. Some have tears here and there, healed over from past fights. Ray does and doesn’t like having them touched. Today, Cody guesses correctly, given the soft rumble his friend makes- it’s a comfort to have a kind touch on one of the few delicate parts of him.

“C’mon,” Cody urges, “let’s go find everyone. See if we can get this all sorted before dinner.”

“They’re gonna be pissed…” Ray warns, but does start walking them back inside.

“We’re going to just have to deal with that, then. I think everyone needs to apologize here, at least a little each,” Cody says. Then, amending, “Except you, actually. You did the right thing, taking yourself out of the situation.”

“Yeah? I did?” Ray perks up.

Cody smiles. “Totally. That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. You didn’t get involved, and you went and got help to solve the situation.”

Cody sees the corners of Ray’s mouth turn upwards, breaking the stony flat line they’ve been for over an hour. At the little flash of fang, in a genuine smile, Cody thinks his friend is nearly feeling better now.

“Cool,” Ray says, half to himself, a note of pride there. “Good on me.”

“Good on you,” Cody echoes, just as proud. It’s nice to see one of the brothers bouncing back already, and finding a little victory in the process no less.

Len meanwhile is probably mad at himself, for falling back on how he’d been taught he was supposed to lead, how he was supposed to treat his brothers so they didn’t forget their place in the hierarchy. Tello is probably sore over losing his glasses, robbed of the ability to see as clearly as others, and mad at everyone, including himself, for choosing callousness instead of kindness. And Angelo… is probably hidden somewhere and fidgeting with one of his favored toys, trying to unravel his own tangled up thoughts and figure out how to avoid the worst of his brother’s wrath.

It’s going to be a long afternoon, likely speaking. Corralling them all together and drawing out apologies from the smoke and mirrors of their defenses.

Cody decides he’ll have something nice sent up for them, once it’s all over. As a reward, for pushing through a situation that makes every single one of them intensely uncomfortable. Maybe sushi? That way Ray, Tello, and Angelo can eat the same things as Cody and Len at dinner. Everyone can eat raw fish, even if the actual sushi rolls will be for just Cody and Len. Less focus on the dietary limitations of the three with tear and swallow dental design.

“Where first?” Cody asks Ray, just as they get into the elevator. To avoid bonking his head as they enter, he slides down to let Ray just hold him. His friend does so with one arm and no effort, because compared to what Ray can lift, Cody is basically a throw pillow’s weight to him.

“I’m gonna guess… Len’s in the simulation room,” Ray says, and carefully presses the correct button with his claw tip.

Cody nods, and imagines they’ll have to convince Len to put down his weapons first, before they can talk. “I’ll hazard a guess Tello’s either in his room, or a lab. But… where do you figure Angelo went this time?”

“Dunno,” Ray says gruffly. “Probably gonna have to lure him out somehow. Couldn’t find him at all last time around… he’s getting a little too good at that.”

But it’s not like any of them are going to demand Angelo share wherever he goes to hide, whenever things get to be too much and he needs somewhere he  _knows_  is safe. Even if it can be inconvenient sometimes, Cody isn’t going to ask Len that he give up the (these days carefully stored and rarely touched) swords he has, or that Tello remove the thick locks he’s got bolted into the frame of his door. Or, that Ray stops coming and interrupting Cody’s work hours, asking for someone to make sense of something he just  _can’t_  at the moment.

Like they don’t tell Cody to go away, the nights Cody has to check and recheck the security systems of their home, and go over again the extremely thorough background profiles of his board of counsel- when he’s in need of being around someone who he knows, he knows with absolute and  _complete_  certainty, he can  _trust,_  wholly and explicitly. Someone who won’t turn on him and reveal  _everything_  was a complete and utter lie, and try to tear off his wings so he can’t  _ever_  escape them.

Cody doesn’t begrudge the brothers of how they cope with things, and they don’t begrudge him. He lets them approach things in their own time, with their own angles, and they let him come and sit and just  _hide_  behind them, against their sides, where he’s positive no one can get to him.

In all honesty, they’ve been mutually important to each other’s recovery. And that recovery has progressed better than Cody could have ever hoped for it to.

Hence why Cody will be proud of them all, after everything is said and done, and they’ve restored the sometimes delicate balance of their home.

“It’ll be okay,” Cody assures his friend, who is near and dear as any of his siblings to Cody. “We’ll find Angelo eventually. It’ll work out alright in the end.”

“I know,” Ray replies, bringing a large hand up to Cody’s shoulder and patting gently. And that trust, the faith he’s got that things  _will_  turn out alright in the end- the faith in Cody that they’ll fix this- is as warm and important feeling as it always is, right in the center of Cody’s chest.

The elevator stops at the simulation level, and the doors slide open. Ray carries Cody out of the lift, and they head off to start collecting their family again

**Author's Note:**

> we never really got to know much about any of the dark turtles' personalities beyond len's, or see how they would have acted outside of the influence of darius, so this is all hopeful speculation on my part. also: how could i resist giving Any version of donatello glasses, especially a grumpy clone version? i couldn't. no one could.
> 
> subscribe to the series if you'd like to see more of my take on these terrible, wonderful boys, and lemme know how you felt about my interpretations.
> 
> thanks for reading my 2003 tmnt fanfic in this year of 2018, ciao.


End file.
